PCA Conversations

We are spending a few Wednesdays in a row exploring the topic of parish—the where and who of ministry. We’d like to discuss together the importance of place to the mission of the local church. To what extent should a circumscribed geography be determinative of a local church’s calling and culture? Does a theology of place matter? Indeed, what’s the place of geography in the mission of the church?

What you will read over these few Wednesday posts is a real discussion that occurred between pastors from around the country in very different places. They serve as church planters, pastors, and associate pastors who are thinking through what it means to be committed to a particular place and people.  The churches these men serve range from 1000 to 100 people and from 30 to 3 years old. We are presenting the former discussion here in serial form over a few weeks, and the idea is that you’ll be encouraged to join in as we go–ask questions, argue, provide insight–to help the conversation take new directions.

“Road Blocks (literally)”

John Haralson, Seattle: Great, great stuff. One factor that plays a role is economics. Our church is situated in a very expensive neighborhood. Most of the people in our church live in either that neighborhood or one of the neighboring ones (but there are some commuters, like Giorgio said).  Over time, economic pressures push people away from our area. How do you deal with this? It tends to militate against our long-term embodied presence in this neighborhood

Ray Cannata, New Orleans: Question is, will we just talk about the parish model or will we make the sacrifices to actually stick to it?   I’d say that limiting our reach to just one neighborhood and maybe 2 of the bordering ones not only increased the quality and tone of our ministry (way better accountability, more fellowship, less compartmentalizing of church life), it also (counter-intuitively) helped us grow, I think.  Un-churched people in our city visit a church not because one friend invites them to a place 20 minutes away, but because 3 friends invite them to a place 5 minutes away.  Regional churches often get consumers looking for something better than they have.  Parish churches often get the un-churched neighbors and the mission-minded Christians who don’t care that my preaching is weak and we do not have children’s ministry; they care about community.

I think the parish thing, while seemingly limiting, helped us grow numerically as well as qualitatively, but I do realize that eventually there are limits you will start to hit.  You won’t get to be more than 500 people, probably, with a parish model.  But to me that’s another plus.

Jamison Galt, Brooklyn: I think the parish approach really is the future in many ways. And not just for nostalgia. There are problems with tying ‘parish’ to a by-gone agricultural or techophobe inclination (Wendell Berry, Neil Postman). Undoubtedly the parish approach did originate in an agricultural context, but this alone does not take telos into account. You know, the whole Garden to City thing. To me, it’s undeniable biblically and historically that God is superintending human progress and ingenuity toward the creation of extended and proliferated garden-cities; this is where we are headed; this is God’s intent. What happens practically in the life of modern cities is that they move from agricultural, land-oriented economic and sociological entities, to more developed, commuter-oriented entities (people perhaps live in one place but have to go downtown for work, another hood for shopping, another for eating), to fully urbanized entities in which each specific locale (neighborhood) is totally self-sufficient with regards to lifestyle, economic opportunities, amenities, etc, even as each is a part of the larger city life and structure. In short, cities and their component neighborhoods move from adolescence, to pubescent semi-independence, to adulthood. It is in the first and last stages that parish makes the most sense. It’s the awkward, pimply, unformed teenage phase that presents the most challenge to the parish approach.

Greg Thompson, Charlottesville: I agree that Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, Flannery O’Connor–and I’d add Robert Capon (Supper of the Lamb)–and especially Gabriel Marquez are all helpful in giving us the imagination we need to see the importance of particularity.  I honestly think that half the work here for us in articulating parish instincts is retraining the imagination to see the beauty of the particular.

And make no mistake, in doing this we’re coming up against Modernity–all of it–(at least its rationalistic strain) when we try.  I mean think about it, the relevant cultural artifacts that Modernity has produced have been tract housing, cubicle culture, globalization (which means, at one level, the attempt to culturally homogenize the world), reductive food science (where we think not about carrots but about beta-carotene), the rise of the strip mall and the chain restaurant, etc.  Our people–the older ones for sure (and the younger ones too, though in just a groovier commercialized universality that pretends to particularity, think Gap here)–have been culturally shaped to value universality and not to see particularity as essential to personhood.  This is one of the reasons that modernity is largely heretical.  But I digress.  All this is to say, articulating a parish understanding will take uprooting some powerful cultural forces in the lives of our people.  Which can only be done by winning the imagination.

In terms of church folks who are writing about this, in addition to “The Parochial Church” (which is very good), I do think that Eugene Peterson is gold on this.  He was the first who introduced me to this idea and he actually uses Berry and Dillard as models.  That’s where I heard about them both.  He actually uses agricultural images.  Can’t remember which book, but I’ll look for it today.  It’s one of his pastoral works.

Anyway, thanks for a good thread.  I’m learning from you guys. Gotta run to Target.